Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

I welcome this Bill as it makes sense and should be supported. I wish we had local government in this country, but instead we have a system of local administration. This could not have been demonstrated more clearly than when the local government management services board opened its fine new building on the quays and called it Local Government House. While there is no democratic component to that aspect, this was making a strong statement.

There is a great deal of experience among Members of this House who sat on local authorities for decades in some cases, including myself. Local government is a vehicle for renewal but radical reform is required to achieve that and the spotlight will be on local government in that regard. In terms of the household charge, for example, people will have a problem with that because they are paying into a system that is not the proper vehicle and they will rightly ask what they will get in return. There must be confidence in the way public funding is accounted for and in that regard the political parties have to trust the citizens of this country. Radical reform of local government would achieve that.

I have argued that the county council system should be phased out and replaced with a system of district councils and a small number of regional authorities, which would be much more beneficial from the point of view of collective procurement. Also, we need a more strategic focus in terms of planning, land use, transportation planning, and delivery of a range of initiatives, with many services decentralised to that tier and a softer focus that is about shaping a role in that area, which is one of the strengths of this country. The credit union movement and the GAA, for example, have been spectacularly successful because they had that local model of people working with each other and for their community. It is important to stress that point at every available opportunity.

An area on which the Bill would shine some light is the ridiculous needs and resources model that allocates funding to local government in an inequitable way. When it was introduced, local authorities were reassured that no local authority would lose out as a consequence of that model but there was discrimination and it ensured that local authorities that were growing did not advance in terms of matching their staffing levels or financial resources as a result of what was transferred from the national to the local. The counties that benefited least from that were those on the periphery of the major urban centres, and not exclusively those in Dublin. I refer to those in Cork county, Galway county as well as the counties on the periphery of Dublin. The standard of services vary greatly and the type of audit being examined would raise questions at national level and give a focus on areas where that is required.

Deputy McGuinness made the point about transport but Departments must communicate with each other also. The safety regime put in place by the Department of Transport was done in the absence of any kind of a remit in terms of that decision to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Some local authorities are abiding by those rules to the letter but others are not. I recall driving from Dublin to Galway one weekend. We had been told the grass on the motorway median could not be cut because one of the lanes had to be closed off on safety grounds but when I arrived in Connacht I saw a fellow on a tractor working on a similar motorway to the one in Dublin who it appears was not under the same restrictions. I am not saying people should be exposed to any kind of risk if they are working in a dangerous location such as a motorway but approximately one third of all the money that goes into road projects here is taken up by the need to adhere to safety requirements. That must be examined in a way that considers the people who are working on the system while at the same time adhering to safety requirements. That accounts for some of the difference in the funding allocated.

When I was first elected to Kildare County Council I asked about the location of development contributions. It got to the point where I wanted to know if they were in a Swiss bank account or the Cayman Islands because I did not know where they were located. I continued to ask about those contributions because I knew people were paying them or they were being demanded on planning applications. They certainly were not appearing in the accounts. There did not appear to be a difficulty in pursuing the small person through the courts if they did not pay water or bin charges but there was not the same focus on that big pot of money. That is an issue I have pursued over the years to the point that when Kildare County Council eventually put a system in place, at my insistence, I wanted to examine the code behind the software to make sure it achieved what was intended. I wanted to be satisfied about the matter because I had been given the run around for years on the issue. Ultimately, the council did an audit and discovered there was €15 million outstanding. That large amount of money was never collected because of the statute of limitations. That is a disgrace, and I am convinced it happened in other places.

I asked a question of the Minister of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in February about development contributions and I discovered that in 2009, local authorities had collected €962 million in development contributions but that money could not be spent because of the conditions imposed by the Maastricht treaty and the criteria for debt; the local authority is part of that same system. I am concerned that where special contributions are applied to planning permissions that money will be handed back where projects cannot proceed and there is no money coming from central funds that can be matched with those special development contributions. A picture nationally of that is essential as is one location where it can be controlled, and the correct place to do that is under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General. I support the Bill.

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